Generative AI and the Future of Pedagogical Sustainability: Balancing Creative Innovation with Ethical Fairness

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue welcomes research spanning higher education, executive education, professional training, continuing education, and lifelong learning, including business and management education and computing-related disciplines (Information Systems, MIS, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science), emphasizing educator-led and trainer-led transformation.

This Special Issue addresses the sustainability of education in the GenAI era across higher education, executive education, professional training, continuing education, and lifelong learning in business and management education and computing-related disciplines (Information Systems, MIS, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Science). We define educational sustainability through four interconnected dimensions aligned with UN Sustainable Development Goals: (1) economic sustainability—long-term viability, cost-effectiveness, and learning transfer to professional workplaces; (2) social sustainability—equity, accessibility, inclusivity, and reducing digital divides across diverse global learner populations; (3) environmental sustainability—carbon footprint and energy consumption of AI-enhanced educational technologies and fostering environmental stewardship and climate literacy; (4) institutional sustainability—resilience, integrity, quality assurance, and adaptability of educational governance frameworks and assessment systems. Generative AI presents both opportunities and threats across these dimensions. While GenAI can democratize personalized learning and reduce educator workload, it risks exacerbating inequities through unequal access to premium tools, undermining academic integrity systems, consuming significant computational energy with environmental consequences, and disrupting established pedagogical models without clear evidence of long-term learning effectiveness. This Special Issue examines how educators and trainers can lead sustainable transformation—redesigning curricula, assessment practices, and institutional policies to harness GenAI's benefits while mitigating risks to equity, environmental responsibility, learning quality, and institutional resilience.

Topics

We invite conceptual, empirical, and practice-based research operationalizing sustainability through measurable indicators:

1. Curriculum & Learning Outcomes: GenAI-era competency models; human-AI co-creativity for sustainability challenges; cognitive offloading impacts; sustainable development education; social equity simulations.
2. Assessment & Academic Integrity: AI-resilient assessment design; sustainable integrity systems; micro-credentials and green skills certification; cost–benefit analysis of AI-enhanced assessment.
3. Equity, Ethics & Inclusion: Algorithmic equity and bias; digital divide 2.0; accessibility and universal design; environmental footprint of AI-enhanced education; multilingual and cross-cultural learning.
4. Institutional Governance & Faculty Development: Sustainable governance frameworks; faculty professional development; data privacy and security; green AI procurement; policy and regulatory sustainability; vendor lock-in and institutional autonomy.

Prof. Dr. Despo Ktoridou
Prof. Dr. Nicholas Theodorakopoulos
Dr. Vasso Stylianou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• generative AI (GenAI)
• sustainable education
• GenAI-enabled pedagogy
• educational sustainability
• professional learning
• executive education
• sustainable assessment design
• AI-authentic assessment
• educational equity
• social sustainability in education
• academic integrity systems
• AI governance
• learning transfer
• green AI
• environmental footprint of EdTech
• human–AI co-creativity
• cognitive offloading
• digital divide 2.0
• algorithmic fairness
• institutional resilience
• SDG 4 quality education
• educational resource efficiency
• faculty professional development
• EdTech carbon accounting